Tel Aviv Diary - June 24-8, 2007

June 24, 2007

Eilat, to tell the truth, is a hair dryer today. Hot sharav winds simply take your breath away. Fortunately, however, there is also the Red Sea.

We drove there and back and even though I thought the decision was foolish when we could have flown, I was astounded at how much the desert has bloomed since the last time I drove there. It is simply beyond belief. For example, we started comparing one piece of from the days we used to drive to BeerSheva 30 years ago and there were no Beduin or Jewish settlements, no restaurants, little grazing land, almost no trees, and now it is all green and settled. I don't know the details, don't know which places are under dispute, and which places I might have forgotten about from 30 years ago, but it's a different world.

By they way, the last restaurant we visited in Eilat was probably the best of all, La Cucina on the boardwalk.

June 24, 2007

Where are the pictures? Well as you know the more I see people the more I love animals, so here is the nature preserve.

The oryxes (or as Jouke corrected me - addexes) seemed happy

The Onagers ignored us totally

The ostrich was particularly intimate.

Maybe more pictures later. In any case the animals in the preserve are rare, and from the bible. We people in Eilat all looked alike, red and fanning ourselves.

And worrying about Gilad shalit and Alan Johnson.

June 26, 3007

The worry never leaves us. Today we sat at Comme-il-faut on the sea in a blissful setting. Wonderful olives, lemonade, and a sea breeze. The waiter brings our meal and I make a joke. He doesn't smile, but responds to all our needs and wants. I try again. He responds with a straight face. "He's been through something," Orit says. "In the army." We are both sure of it, suddenly see some terrible horror and remember friends and relatives who had the same facial expression as our waiter at one time or another. We talk of other things. Suddenly there is a noise - far away but protracted. It takes a bit longer to move to other subjects. Still, the scene remains idyllic.

Once back in the car, I turn on the news immediately.

If you've seen this soldier, Sharon Henn, missing since yesterday noon, call: Don 050-2429298, Rotem 050-2404037 or the family-09-8358731

The 28th is 'white night' in Tel Aviv. All night. Panic is appearing in "The Third Ear" at 1:30 in the morning. Details here.

June 27, 2007

Turns out the soldier was found last month. I always check these things, but it came last night from an old friend, and just seemed so appropriate.

I have been to hell and back. Hell is for me a penny arcade, and this particular hell was in the Arena shopping mall in Herzlia. I must have liked them once, but now the noise and the lights and the pushing and shoving was unbearable to me. I don't know how those sweet innocent children are not destroyed by these places.

In the mean time, a child was killed today in Gaza....

June 28, 2007

A little discrepancy here - on the one hand the law against importing cosmetics that test on animals passed today in the knesset. on the other hand, our president (soon to be passed) plea bargained for lesser charges of molestation and will not go to prison. So on the one hand the bodies of animals are protected but the bodies of women are not. Why? Because forbidding animal testing doesn't effect or restrict men.

Is this a lesson to women? Yes - that we have to make sure women have our own sources of power, that we have to support each other and we have to get into positions of power in the establishment. Because we can't trust men to protect us. Remember "Jury of our Peers?"

June 29, 3007

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